Can I draw peoples attention back to the Poll in the Diary asking for your prediction as to who the next POTUS will be? I am particularly surprised that no one has yet predicted that McCain will win, given that there are some votes for Huckabee and given that McCain polls better than Huckabee in all the head to head contests with any of the top three Democratic contenders.

If McCain continues to beat Romney and Giulliani and unites all the non-Christian right behind him, does that not mean he wins the GOP nomination and has a good shot at the Presidency?

As far as I can recall evangelicals make up 40% of the GOP voter base but can be relied to turn out in huge numbers for an evangelical candidate. Thus if McCain fails to unite and mobilise the non-evangelical right Huckabee wins.

I also think McCain may be able to pick up some of the non-evangelical populist anti-establishment vote that Edwards also attracts. He is by no means a hard right financial conservative ideologue or a Washington/bib business insider, which is what scares the business wing of the GOP.

McCain has a very short time to demolish Romney and Giulliani before a Huckabee victory becomes inevitable by default. If he fails to do so and the non-evangelical vote remains split, then Huckabee only needs the evangelicals to win.

I'd more put them at 55% of the potential voter base (with all reps 45% of all voters, and the Religious Reich 25% of all, and even that only due to lower voter turnout among the crazies), though these categories are vague. Do you havesome polls or studies?

LAWTON: According to exit polls from the 2000 elections, 60 percent of all people who attend religious services more than once a week voted for Bush. And the more often people worshipped, the more likely they were to vote Republican. Forty percent of Bush's total vote came from evangelicals.

That 40% is not only of Republicans, and epublicans decreased since. Now looking at Iowa:

A Dem would have to be well ahead in polls for me to be confident he would win because evangelicals will vote near 100% for one of them. Bush was never truly one of them - Huckabee might be closer to their hearts